Are you implying that the University was showing American Sniper in the same way (i.e. as an example of the mentality/mindset of "the enemy"). I doubt it. Unless this is what you are implying, this is a straw man.

I think what the library is getting at here is exactly what you stated. If a book has a single complaint (or even multiple), but has been checked out hundreds of times, that is not a very high complaint ratio, so the majority of the public must not have a problem with it.

Although this isn't necessarily a defense of appropriateness, it does show that the individual who requested the removal has a different barometer for appropriateness than the majority of the library-going public.

Just so I understand, are you implying that part of this freedom does NOT include the right to urge them to change their name.

I agree with you, in theory, that a company should be able to run themselves as they see fit and we, the people, should determine how well they perform in their business. However, I would argue that in addition to not frequenting their establishment, part of my rights would include doing whatever I can to influence them to change their product.

@John Fenderson,
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Not just that it's none of their business, but also on the complexity issues. However, I think claiming that taking the deduction is tantamount to instructing the government to donate in your stead is a bit disingenuous. That would only be true if you were taking a tax credit. A deduction, on the other hand, just prevents them from taxing you on that amount. Also, if you took the deductions, you could afford to give 12% or even more to charity, because the extra taxes you're paying could go straight to the charity's coffers instead of the governments.

I think that would be aiding and abetting. However, in the case of flashing your lights, you are flashing them in the general vicinity, not specifically warning criminals. If you wanted to make a comparison to robbery, it would be more like, going into a crowd and telling everyone that a certain area had a high police presence. If that crowd happened to contain robbers, they may avoid the area that you specified so as to not get caught.

"The university did nothing to silence her speech, but merely said that if she wanted to say those things, she couldn't do it while a student in their school."

Isn't that the exact definition of silencing speech. Short of taking someone's life, all instances of silencing speech are really just where and how said speech is allowed (i.e. "You can say whatever you want, just not in this country... just not within X miles of this event, etc.)

Multiple other factors seem to be left out here. First, the article mentions that the prints are displayed in galleries worldwide. I'm not an art gallery expert, but I would assume they usually pay an artist for this. Second, you are discounting any extra income that may have been generated by the video itself, such as increased record sales (which I'm aware are unlimited) and increased tickets/prices for performances. Most artists spend however much they feel necessary for producing a music video with no hope of making that money back directly. The hope is that the video increases awareness. In this case, it not only did that, but the artist was able to turn the video directly into extra income.

Normally, I agree with most of the posts here, but I'm not sure about this one. It's not like he told a bunch of people to visit the website in question in order to take it down (a la the Slashdot effect). He had them visit a different website that would then generate multiple requests to the server in question. In a way, it sounds like he crowdsourced a DDOS. I'm not sure if it's criminal, but it definitely seems to cross an ethical line.

Even playing offline could be a problem in the future. I was sold I console that would play PS3 games. Future PS3 games might require a certain firmware version (or higher), thereby forcing me to update. You could have someone saying they were willing to forgo all future updates and features in order to keep this one feature, but then the basic functionality (playing PS3 games) would eventually break.